


The Lion and His Lady

by LittleRaven



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-04 23:06:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15157478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: A year after leaving, Lucy finds a true return.





	The Lion and His Lady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spellboundreader316](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spellboundreader316/gifts).



It was a different kind of sight. The lions in the zoo were not the same. Lucy had already known this, of course. But somehow she couldn't help thinking, 'when shall I see him,' and turn to every corner. She knew that much was good, of course. It must be. Even if she was being silly. 

No one could accuse her of that now, Lucy was certain. They were all looking for him, she in the zoo, Edmund in the statues that guarded Lord Nelson, Eustace in the painting he'd hated. Susan must be doing it too, she thought. Far away in America. Peter more than any of them, getting to be with Professor Kirke. Peter must be having the best luck. 

After all, he had promised. Aslan was not a liar. She shuddered in the muggy heat of summer. 

 

She had already been used to going to school with the memory of him. That wasn't hard. It was cause to dream all the more – well, Lucy knew it wasn't a dream, whatever her teachers might have to say. Not unless dreams were more than they thought, which could also be the case. They hadn't always known as much as they seemed to think they did now, so why not? Outside, the gold edges of the leaves wore his face. 

 

The holidays were different. All idle light in the snow, the sky and ground the same color, too bright, too white to look at; like the water stretching up and up, or the sun. The way his face was sometimes when she knew the thoughts in her heart were not worthy of her. Like that. She looked at them anyway, Lucy the Valiant, always seeking. She always took the straightest path, when she could let herself see it. It was the one thing Lucy wanted to be proud of forever. That she should be proud of. He lived in the light – he must--and she must be willing to do the same. But the cold whiteness brought back other memories too, and it wasn't an escape to think on them. 

Lucy went instead to the fire, closer than the cat curling on the rug. It dazzled her eyes. She held them open against the tears that followed, the way they burned before the golden heat and smoke. 

 

Spring brought back the classes and the stiff walls of adulthood – incoming, or so she'd been made to understand. Lucy wasn't worried. It wasn't as if she hadn't done it before. The task she had been given, which was harder now that it was a must and not the everyday of her being, had little to do with what she must be taught. No one would teach her this. It wasn't, she knew, something to be taught. That, it all made her think, was absurd; she would have been happy to learn how to see again. 

She never wanted to learn otherwise. Lucy wanted to go back outside; all the air a young girl should want and more, more. The air of a new sun, fresher, and making other lifetimes fresher still, somehow. She shouldn't have needed it. She should have needed, she should have needed...something. Nothing. The colors of her own heart. Not the ones in the trees, what trees she could have. Outside her schoolroom window, they glistened in the early morning, drying up. The crust of the ice was long gone. Still they shimmered. 

Summer was coming up again, and Lucy waited. 

 

Waiting was the key to impatience. No one had said it. Nevertheless, Lucy knew it was true. It was obvious in how she couldn't do it anymore. Had she ever been able to do it? It had not seemed like waiting, not even in all the time after the wardrobe, before the painting. That seemed false now, just as much as the mirage she saw in every speck of light on the dust, shining her way to something she no longer expected to see. 

Well, she should have known. It had been said. She could hear it in the Beaver's voice--it shocked Lucy to remember it, that she could--Aslan was not tame. He was not her personal guide--her personal lion. Her stuffed toy to draw on at will. He was not hers. Why should she have been able to find him when nobody else had done it? What was he? 

"He isn't for the finding. He's for the keeping." Professor Kirke boomed gently. She sat in his cottage library long after he’d left; it was the sort of place she was expected to find things in. Dreaming wasn't odd here, though now it was more dreaming than it had ever been, and wasn't that odd. A dream wasn't, she was newly certain, something she could ever have lived in. 

Yet she had lived. She was living still. So she had been there. Now she was here. It was what it was, and did one thing make the other less real?   
They had all forgotten, back there. It stood to reason – the word she was meant to love, and yes, she could love it, and here she had a thought, that she understood it better than most could think her capable of doing--that they could forget here, if they were to let it happen. But if they could find him there, they could find him here. He had said so. When had it ever been easy to do? Even for her? 

The room was gold wood, gold sun, gold, gold, gold. She sat in its mouth. Lucy in the mouth of the room, the window pouring in light, deepening the shade into warmth. She closed her eyes to it. She opened them. 

This was the sun in it's best color, only better. It made her eyes feel like popping. The sheen of the tears in them did pop; she was letting them, because that was fine. That was good. Her heart was full in her ribs, as if it had no cage at all, because there was nothing in between them and there never was.


End file.
